Taylor Swift's intuition

Star says she writes what she feels

Country music superstar Taylor Swift poses before performing at Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's "All For The Hall" concert benefit. (Allen J. Schaben, Los Angeles Times)

"The whole process of songwriting starts out in a very lonely place for me," says Taylor Swift.

Forget for a moment that she's a four-time Grammy Award winner who has moved 13 million albums, 25 million song downloads and is the best-selling digital artist in history. When Swift comes on the phone, she is talking the way songwriters talk: An intuitive who favors feeling above all else.

"I sit down to write a song because I'm feeling a very intense emotion, usually an intense form of pain," Swift says. "And I sit there and I'm writing it, and I'm thinking that I'm the only person who has felt this kind of sadness. … And then, the next part, something magical happens. I put that song on an album and it goes out into the world. Then I get to stand on a stage and sing that song to people who are singing the words back. At that point, I don't feel like I'm alone anymore. We're all there in this arena, singing these same words because obviously we've all felt that same kind of sadness."

Swift is on the eve of releasing her third studio album, "Speak Now" (Big Machine), which drops Oct. 25. The girl who began her recording career as a teen country-pop phenomenon is now a full-blown crossover star at 20. Some things have not changed: The kid who penned such freshman and sophomore heartbreak hits as " Tim McGraw" and "Fifteen" is now moving into young adulthood, but she still specializes in first-person narratives about love.

"Writing about love and relationships is just so much more fascinating to me than writing about jet lag or living on a tour bus or hotels," she says. "I don't write about my career or my schedule. I write about what I feel."

And what Swift feels seems to be shared by a significant chunk of the world.

"Her audience is big, it is diverse, and I really think they will stay with her through this," says Wade Jessen, Nashville's senior chart manager for Billboard. "I think the younger members of her audience are making that journey with her."

Of the four songs made available leading up to the record's official release, "Innocent" signals her greatest maturation as an artist. It's her musical response to Kanye West, who created a media stink last year when he interrupted Swift's acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards. Performing the stately pop ballad for the first time at this year's VMAs, Swift took the high road. Her lyrics teemed with forgiveness and empathy, and the notion that renewal is possible even after a very public fall from grace: "Who you are is not what you did."

Although the title track of her new release is a peppy but disposable story-song, the singles "Mine" and "Back to December" are classic Swift song-craft, simple but honest expressions of emotion. The wistful pop ballad "Back to December" finds her regretting a breakup with a former boyfriend. The addictively hook-y "Mine" casts Swift as a wounded loner — "a careless man's careful daughter" — who falls for a guy who truly gets her: "There's a drawer of my things at your place/You learn my secrets and figure out why I'm guarded."

In these snapshots of love in all its glory and angst, Swift has not retreated from the confessional tone that first drew fans — especially female ones — to her. And just like the girls and young women who confide in her at her meet-and-greets, she wants to be authentically heard.

"I think everyone has a desire to be understood," says Swift. "And especially girls like me, and girls my age, we want to be understood in our relationships. We want to feel that someone we're with knows us on a deeper level, and wants to know us on a deeper level. I think that we also want to be heard by society and really have our thoughts be conveyed."

Her power to connect with her fans should not be underestimated. In the concert video of her 2008 hit "Fearless," the camera pans her adoring audience and fixes on a fan holding a sign. It is perhaps the most personal love letter of all to Swift: "I Play Guitar Because of U."

"There's no question that she's put herself in the place of being a role model for these young women," says Jessen. "I think there's a whole lot in her music — the whole diary aspect, using her own emotions to talk about her challenges — that encourages young people to do the same thing. I think she's made it more comfortable for young people to express what's going on with themselves, which is so key to their survival of those horribly awkward and sometimes dangerous years."